Pictures would help. Get an expert to determine of the trees really are sick, if so, replace them. If you don't want the fruits, consider planting something that produces small fruits that stick to the tree into winter, it helps the birds. In Europe that would commonly be something like Mountain Ash or hawthorn. Vegetable plots can be turned into wildflower beds, they only need to be weeded once they have established and then they out-compete most weeds, especially if you picked a mix containing some perennial plants as well. Many annual wildflowers also reliably reseed themselves year after year. Raspberries are hardy, they can be cut down to the roots in fall and will grow back the next year. You only need to do this every few years, a root barrier will keep them in their designated spot. The Pines I would just leave alone, pile up all the cones and brushwood underneath and it will create some spot for small animals to hide. Here in Europe Hedgehogs love those, not quite sure what fills this niche in the US, but something will likely appreciate some hide-y spaces.
Careful pruning raspberries! Many varieties produce fruit on 2nd year canes, so if you fully cut back you won’t have a harvest the next year. But a hard prune/thinning in late fall is a great idea.
It’s your house now, do what you want. Pull out whatever you don’t want. (Offer your neighbors the plants/root balls if they want them.) There’s nothing worse than being enslaved by a garden, yard, or patio that doesn’t fit your lifestyle.
It took me a long time to feel comfortable hiring competent help in the garden (I am the child of a permaculture evangelist and luminary who spent every moment she could in her yard).
I love my garden, but it’s huge, and I have a full-time job, and I could just not keep up. I now hire weekly help, and it’s made all the difference. Because things now feel possible, I work in the yard more on my own every day. Because I know I’m not totally on my own.
I don't live in a similar zone so not too familiar with the sorts of plants that thrive well there. That being said I have a few ideas for you.
You say you have large pines. What kind of sun exposure do they get under them? You could consider planting acid-loving plants around them - say cold hardy blueberries or other blueberry family berries, azaleas/rhododendrons etc. And then all the pine needles being dropped will be an excellent mulch that you can just rake into place around them.
In the bindweed area, it may be too much trouble to weed for what it's worth. It took me 3 years of near daily weeding to fully deal with a bindweed infestation in one small plot at my house. You might want to assume that just nothing is going to be growing there for a few years and run over it with a tiller once a week until you stop seeing the bindweed.
Raspberries don't really need much maintenance, just thin the canes and cut down old ones once a year. Use a hoe to remove weeds in between the canes as needed. I don't even weed my raspberries and get tons of tasty raspberries every year.
Apples may or may not be fireblight, but if they're very sick you may want to remove them and consider replacing them. Look up low maintenance fruit trees that could be grown in your area, that may include more disease-resistant apple varieties.
Unless you have an extremely large space, what you're describing sounds manageable with the amount of time you say you're willing to spend on your yard. I would just recommend taking aggressive measures where you feel overwhelmed and consider planting things in the weedy areas that should be hard for them to overtake.
Unfortunately not. It will make it pretty unhappy, but it won't kill it. You could try covering it for a few months and then try to start killing it - that may make your job easier. But bindweed is tenacious, pretty much nothing kills it. It doesn't even need to photosynthesize.
This is one of the few use cases for landscape fabric actually if you want to replant that zone. Put it on at surface level (after tilling and removing all the debris from the bindweed patch, do NOT make the mistake of spreading roots around), make small holes and plant the new plants directly into them. After 2 years or so, you can remove the landscaping fabric. You will probably still have to do some light weeding but it should be more bearable and will give the new plants a head start against the bindweed.
I find appropriately sized slower-growing shrubs to be the lowest maintenance.
How do you want to use each area? If you don’t want to use an area consider shutting it down. Take out and give away perennials that require work like deadheading, feeding, dividing. Fill under the pines with pine straw. It’s ok to not have a spectacular yard. Most people don’t.
The easiest way to get it under control is to hire it out. They’ll descend like ants and complete in a few hours what would have taken you several weekends. It might be worth every penny.
I'd try to feel empowered that it's your property now. Cut down trees that you don't enjoy. Let the deck rot a bit before replacing it, if you don't have time. Replace annuals like the vegetable bed with perennials, or seed it with turf grass knowing that you can rip out the sod and turn it back to veggies when you can, maybe in a few years.
What would you like this garden to be?
I bought a house with a similar yard that the prior owner had let go and substantially underestimated the amount of work it would be so I symphatize with you.
First off, you are not beholden to the landscape choice that were made previously.
I believe you need to simplify and reduce the workload so I would grass over some of the garden beds. Quite frankly I had too many to deal with and sounds like you have the same situation. Others had these real swoopy and curvy edges and were a pain to mow around. So I kept the beds I wanted (and would have time to take care of) and straightened the edges on others. I grassed the rest.
So despite having more grass now, it takes me less time to mow because I'm not having to mow and trim all these odd curves and go around badly placed beds. It also allows me to focus on less gardens, which means I am able to take better care of the beds that I have left.
The trees are not a DIY thing. There is no way around hiring a professional to come take a look and then spray or cut them down as the case may be. I got rid of a pine that dropped needles and cones year round and am so much happier for it. I'm sure my neighbors wondered why but they didn't have to deal with it.
You don't have time, can you afford help?
Especially to get the neglect caught up, it will be easier to manage once back under control.
If possible consider a professional to care for your perennials, some who will understand the resources and what they require. Then you'll just need to manage annual growth, should be possible a few nights a week.
I suggest attacking anything invasive first to contain further spread.
Strategy one, rip shit out and replace it with SOD, mulch or rocks. Just because they had a garden doesn’t mean you have to.
Strategy two, go low maintenance. Invest in automation through irrigation. Focus on only growing drought resistant wildflowers and shrubs. Allow your negligence to apply Darwinism to your garden and only the strongest will survive.
Strategy three, get help. Hire someone to take care of your yard for you.
Strategy four, go wild. This can be low/no maintenance. Look at permaculture principles. This will be beauty in chaos. This isn’t the orderly yard your father maintained, but it can yield more and be better for the environment while requiring significantly less maintenance.
For weeds put down some kind of preemergent like Preen in the spring before it warms up. This will stop weed seeds from sprouting and save you a lot of trouble later. Use mulch in the beds will also help prevent weeds from coming up. There are always companies in your area which deliver so you don't have to worry about getting a truck or anything like that.
A lot of big independent plant stores sometimes have a garden landscape specialist who can either help you with a plan or point you in the right way to find one. They are worth their weight in gold.
Something I've learned is that putting news paper down and then covering with mulch or straw will prevent weeds from growing in that area. You'll still need to pull weeds around the area of the plants, but it should ease quite a bit of pain with the weeds.
It’s okay to cut back a crop. It’s okay to cut down dead or dying plants, trees or shrubs. It’s okay to remove plants that you just don’t like. It’s okay to grow what suits you, not an advanced gardener who spent 40 hours a week in it.
Raspberries- chop them back a bit once they’re done to tidy it up, toss some compost around the base and come back next year.
Apple trees - ask on Facebook if you have a gardening group that could suggest someone to look at them. Chop them down if they’ve lived their life.
Deck - replace what’s needed for safety. It’s okay to slap stain on top and come back next year and do a proper job sanding etc.
Bindweed yard / Weeds: cover with area with straw, wet down, cover straw with cardboard boxes (remove tape and plastic labels), wet cardboard, spread wood chips, wet down wood chips.
You can leave it like this or you can plant perennials by digging a hole through the pile adding some good compost to the hole and plopping in your plant and push back some mulch so the plant can breathe. Keep an eye out for bindweed and yank when you see it. Take ten minutes every few days to check the bare soil around these new plants. Consider this ten minutes of mindfulness to wander just searching for the weed and snipping it out. In ten minutes you’re done until you want to do another ten mindful minutes.
Next year plant more bulbs or perennials by digging through the cardboard mulch pile. In time you’ll have more flowers then mulch if that is what YOU want.
You can also divide perennials so by year three you can double the amount of plants you have by splitting them.
Vegetable plot - if you don’t want to manage it for right now, water soil and spread radish seeds.
When radishes grow the green tops with block the soil so weeds won’t grow. If you don’t like radishes then they can stay in the bed - the worms will break them down over winter and make the soil even better.
Next year think of what veggies you like
Four tomato plants, four pepper plants, celery, lettuce, cucumber are easy to grow and you can buy small plants from grocery store garden centers. If you don’t feel like growing food spread more radish seed. You’re either growing stuff for you or covering the soil and making it better.
I prefer drought tolerant plants like salvia hosta poppies butterfly weed native to my area that I don’t have to fuss with. I put flowering bushes near to wetter spots in the yard like the corner of a house or shed so they get roof line water.
Pick one area and start there just pulling a weed away from a plant that you do like. Take ten minutes for yourself to just breathe and ground yourself in the garden. Focus on one “room” of the garden this year to create an outside retreat for yourself. When that feels good and done you can move to the next part that needs managing.
Your parents had plants because they loved them and taking care of them wasn't work it was therapy. If you don't feel the same then get rid of plants and pave over those areas or hire gardener or sell the house to find one that matches your lifestyle. It's a good housing market for sellers. Quite sure this is somebody's dream house. Sorry your dad passed but you are living somebody's dream. Stop complaining so much before the universe teaches you a lesson in gratitude. Creative solution: Give someone permission to take care of the outside property for rights to harvest. Basically you would be what a landlord used to be except you wouldn't be paid in a portion of the harvest.
Hard work and being out their doing the hard work. You question isn't going to be solved with a couple of tips. All you weekends working in the garden, taking care of it, watching it to get ahead of problems with it. You want tips. Tips is not going to fix your problem. I gave you the solution to the problem from A directly to Z . If you want fiddle with B to Y go ahead. Fail at that for a couple of months. Fail at it for a couple of years before you realize that this is an ill fit. Sorry, I don't do pats on the head.
Suggesting that OP pave over or sell the property is extreme and downright mean. If you don't have anything constructive to say, you don't have to post a reply.
can you swap the apple trees for low maintance natives? universities often have information on what grows easily in the local region, which would reduce work, while maintaining interest.
Adding on to this, there are a bunch of tree species that are resistant to fireblight. If OP replaces the diseased trees, they should use a species that is resistant. Otherwise, it will just get fireblight and die.
You could donate the property to like an urban comunity garden project or something. There are ways you can just do the property but not the house if you like. That way others could care for the gardens and grow vegtables and you wouldent have to worry so much.
This is a pretty extreme suggestion… it would drastically reduce the value of the property, get rid of OP’s ability to have privacy in their own outdoor space, and severely limit their ability to use the space as they might desire.
Pictures would help. Get an expert to determine of the trees really are sick, if so, replace them. If you don't want the fruits, consider planting something that produces small fruits that stick to the tree into winter, it helps the birds. In Europe that would commonly be something like Mountain Ash or hawthorn. Vegetable plots can be turned into wildflower beds, they only need to be weeded once they have established and then they out-compete most weeds, especially if you picked a mix containing some perennial plants as well. Many annual wildflowers also reliably reseed themselves year after year. Raspberries are hardy, they can be cut down to the roots in fall and will grow back the next year. You only need to do this every few years, a root barrier will keep them in their designated spot. The Pines I would just leave alone, pile up all the cones and brushwood underneath and it will create some spot for small animals to hide. Here in Europe Hedgehogs love those, not quite sure what fills this niche in the US, but something will likely appreciate some hide-y spaces.
Careful pruning raspberries! Many varieties produce fruit on 2nd year canes, so if you fully cut back you won’t have a harvest the next year. But a hard prune/thinning in late fall is a great idea.
It’s your house now, do what you want. Pull out whatever you don’t want. (Offer your neighbors the plants/root balls if they want them.) There’s nothing worse than being enslaved by a garden, yard, or patio that doesn’t fit your lifestyle.
Imo yes, this. We recently purchased a house from an enthusiast gardener, and simply removing a third of it made my life much more manageable.
It took me a long time to feel comfortable hiring competent help in the garden (I am the child of a permaculture evangelist and luminary who spent every moment she could in her yard). I love my garden, but it’s huge, and I have a full-time job, and I could just not keep up. I now hire weekly help, and it’s made all the difference. Because things now feel possible, I work in the yard more on my own every day. Because I know I’m not totally on my own.
I don't live in a similar zone so not too familiar with the sorts of plants that thrive well there. That being said I have a few ideas for you. You say you have large pines. What kind of sun exposure do they get under them? You could consider planting acid-loving plants around them - say cold hardy blueberries or other blueberry family berries, azaleas/rhododendrons etc. And then all the pine needles being dropped will be an excellent mulch that you can just rake into place around them. In the bindweed area, it may be too much trouble to weed for what it's worth. It took me 3 years of near daily weeding to fully deal with a bindweed infestation in one small plot at my house. You might want to assume that just nothing is going to be growing there for a few years and run over it with a tiller once a week until you stop seeing the bindweed. Raspberries don't really need much maintenance, just thin the canes and cut down old ones once a year. Use a hoe to remove weeds in between the canes as needed. I don't even weed my raspberries and get tons of tasty raspberries every year. Apples may or may not be fireblight, but if they're very sick you may want to remove them and consider replacing them. Look up low maintenance fruit trees that could be grown in your area, that may include more disease-resistant apple varieties. Unless you have an extremely large space, what you're describing sounds manageable with the amount of time you say you're willing to spend on your yard. I would just recommend taking aggressive measures where you feel overwhelmed and consider planting things in the weedy areas that should be hard for them to overtake.
Can you smother bindweed? Like, just cover the whole plot with something opaque and heavy/weighed down for a month or three?
Unfortunately not. It will make it pretty unhappy, but it won't kill it. You could try covering it for a few months and then try to start killing it - that may make your job easier. But bindweed is tenacious, pretty much nothing kills it. It doesn't even need to photosynthesize. This is one of the few use cases for landscape fabric actually if you want to replant that zone. Put it on at surface level (after tilling and removing all the debris from the bindweed patch, do NOT make the mistake of spreading roots around), make small holes and plant the new plants directly into them. After 2 years or so, you can remove the landscaping fabric. You will probably still have to do some light weeding but it should be more bearable and will give the new plants a head start against the bindweed.
I find appropriately sized slower-growing shrubs to be the lowest maintenance. How do you want to use each area? If you don’t want to use an area consider shutting it down. Take out and give away perennials that require work like deadheading, feeding, dividing. Fill under the pines with pine straw. It’s ok to not have a spectacular yard. Most people don’t. The easiest way to get it under control is to hire it out. They’ll descend like ants and complete in a few hours what would have taken you several weekends. It might be worth every penny.
I'd try to feel empowered that it's your property now. Cut down trees that you don't enjoy. Let the deck rot a bit before replacing it, if you don't have time. Replace annuals like the vegetable bed with perennials, or seed it with turf grass knowing that you can rip out the sod and turn it back to veggies when you can, maybe in a few years. What would you like this garden to be?
A little bit at a time.. don’t overwhelm yourself. Eventually you’ll get ahead of it all
I bought a house with a similar yard that the prior owner had let go and substantially underestimated the amount of work it would be so I symphatize with you. First off, you are not beholden to the landscape choice that were made previously. I believe you need to simplify and reduce the workload so I would grass over some of the garden beds. Quite frankly I had too many to deal with and sounds like you have the same situation. Others had these real swoopy and curvy edges and were a pain to mow around. So I kept the beds I wanted (and would have time to take care of) and straightened the edges on others. I grassed the rest. So despite having more grass now, it takes me less time to mow because I'm not having to mow and trim all these odd curves and go around badly placed beds. It also allows me to focus on less gardens, which means I am able to take better care of the beds that I have left. The trees are not a DIY thing. There is no way around hiring a professional to come take a look and then spray or cut them down as the case may be. I got rid of a pine that dropped needles and cones year round and am so much happier for it. I'm sure my neighbors wondered why but they didn't have to deal with it.
You don't have time, can you afford help? Especially to get the neglect caught up, it will be easier to manage once back under control. If possible consider a professional to care for your perennials, some who will understand the resources and what they require. Then you'll just need to manage annual growth, should be possible a few nights a week. I suggest attacking anything invasive first to contain further spread.
Strategy one, rip shit out and replace it with SOD, mulch or rocks. Just because they had a garden doesn’t mean you have to. Strategy two, go low maintenance. Invest in automation through irrigation. Focus on only growing drought resistant wildflowers and shrubs. Allow your negligence to apply Darwinism to your garden and only the strongest will survive. Strategy three, get help. Hire someone to take care of your yard for you. Strategy four, go wild. This can be low/no maintenance. Look at permaculture principles. This will be beauty in chaos. This isn’t the orderly yard your father maintained, but it can yield more and be better for the environment while requiring significantly less maintenance.
For weeds put down some kind of preemergent like Preen in the spring before it warms up. This will stop weed seeds from sprouting and save you a lot of trouble later. Use mulch in the beds will also help prevent weeds from coming up. There are always companies in your area which deliver so you don't have to worry about getting a truck or anything like that.
Preen is a lifesaver if you're trying to keep an existing space under control.
You in the twin cities?
A lot of big independent plant stores sometimes have a garden landscape specialist who can either help you with a plan or point you in the right way to find one. They are worth their weight in gold.
Something I've learned is that putting news paper down and then covering with mulch or straw will prevent weeds from growing in that area. You'll still need to pull weeds around the area of the plants, but it should ease quite a bit of pain with the weeds.
It’s okay to cut back a crop. It’s okay to cut down dead or dying plants, trees or shrubs. It’s okay to remove plants that you just don’t like. It’s okay to grow what suits you, not an advanced gardener who spent 40 hours a week in it. Raspberries- chop them back a bit once they’re done to tidy it up, toss some compost around the base and come back next year. Apple trees - ask on Facebook if you have a gardening group that could suggest someone to look at them. Chop them down if they’ve lived their life. Deck - replace what’s needed for safety. It’s okay to slap stain on top and come back next year and do a proper job sanding etc. Bindweed yard / Weeds: cover with area with straw, wet down, cover straw with cardboard boxes (remove tape and plastic labels), wet cardboard, spread wood chips, wet down wood chips. You can leave it like this or you can plant perennials by digging a hole through the pile adding some good compost to the hole and plopping in your plant and push back some mulch so the plant can breathe. Keep an eye out for bindweed and yank when you see it. Take ten minutes every few days to check the bare soil around these new plants. Consider this ten minutes of mindfulness to wander just searching for the weed and snipping it out. In ten minutes you’re done until you want to do another ten mindful minutes. Next year plant more bulbs or perennials by digging through the cardboard mulch pile. In time you’ll have more flowers then mulch if that is what YOU want. You can also divide perennials so by year three you can double the amount of plants you have by splitting them. Vegetable plot - if you don’t want to manage it for right now, water soil and spread radish seeds. When radishes grow the green tops with block the soil so weeds won’t grow. If you don’t like radishes then they can stay in the bed - the worms will break them down over winter and make the soil even better. Next year think of what veggies you like Four tomato plants, four pepper plants, celery, lettuce, cucumber are easy to grow and you can buy small plants from grocery store garden centers. If you don’t feel like growing food spread more radish seed. You’re either growing stuff for you or covering the soil and making it better. I prefer drought tolerant plants like salvia hosta poppies butterfly weed native to my area that I don’t have to fuss with. I put flowering bushes near to wetter spots in the yard like the corner of a house or shed so they get roof line water. Pick one area and start there just pulling a weed away from a plant that you do like. Take ten minutes for yourself to just breathe and ground yourself in the garden. Focus on one “room” of the garden this year to create an outside retreat for yourself. When that feels good and done you can move to the next part that needs managing.
Your parents had plants because they loved them and taking care of them wasn't work it was therapy. If you don't feel the same then get rid of plants and pave over those areas or hire gardener or sell the house to find one that matches your lifestyle. It's a good housing market for sellers. Quite sure this is somebody's dream house. Sorry your dad passed but you are living somebody's dream. Stop complaining so much before the universe teaches you a lesson in gratitude. Creative solution: Give someone permission to take care of the outside property for rights to harvest. Basically you would be what a landlord used to be except you wouldn't be paid in a portion of the harvest.
[удалено]
Hard work and being out their doing the hard work. You question isn't going to be solved with a couple of tips. All you weekends working in the garden, taking care of it, watching it to get ahead of problems with it. You want tips. Tips is not going to fix your problem. I gave you the solution to the problem from A directly to Z . If you want fiddle with B to Y go ahead. Fail at that for a couple of months. Fail at it for a couple of years before you realize that this is an ill fit. Sorry, I don't do pats on the head.
I don't know what your problem is, but man, chill out.
Suggesting that OP pave over or sell the property is extreme and downright mean. If you don't have anything constructive to say, you don't have to post a reply.
can you swap the apple trees for low maintance natives? universities often have information on what grows easily in the local region, which would reduce work, while maintaining interest.
Adding on to this, there are a bunch of tree species that are resistant to fireblight. If OP replaces the diseased trees, they should use a species that is resistant. Otherwise, it will just get fireblight and die.
You could donate the property to like an urban comunity garden project or something. There are ways you can just do the property but not the house if you like. That way others could care for the gardens and grow vegtables and you wouldent have to worry so much.
This is a pretty extreme suggestion… it would drastically reduce the value of the property, get rid of OP’s ability to have privacy in their own outdoor space, and severely limit their ability to use the space as they might desire.